Extra: Fixing an Invalid Document

There are several problems with the document. Can you find them all?

The headings are manually formatted
The first heading contains a bullet point
Sometimes a line break is used instead of a paragraph break in the document. This has also led to “manual” formatting of the text
Paragraph breaks have been formatted by inserting multiple line breaks and/or paragraph breaks
The margin heading of the hanging indentation is separated by using multiple spaces
There are manually formatted passages in the text
The table is arranged in such a way that the text lines up around it, which causes any new text after the Highlight heading to be positioned peculiarly on the side of the table.

Video: Formatting Symbols

Info: Formatting symbols, what are they?

Formatting symbols (also known as non-printing characters or paragraph marks) are visual indicators that represent the formatting applied to the text in a document. These symbols do not appear when the document is printed but become visible when you enable them. At first, these characters may seem confusing—spaces, for example, appear as dots between words. However, you’ll get used to them quickly!

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Why Formatting Symbols Are Useful:

Troubleshooting: They allow you to see hidden formatting issues, such as extra spaces, unnecessary paragraph breaks, or incorrect use of tabs.
Precision in Formatting: They help ensure consistent formatting across your document, especially when dealing with complex layouts or when collaborating with others.
Document Layout Control: Understanding where these symbols are used helps in controlling the layout, like preventing unwanted page breaks or maintaining proper alignment.
Efficiency: They can speed up the editing process by making it easier to spot and correct formatting errors.

Most common non-printing characters

#### Space	Välilyönti muotoilumerkki
#### Non-breaking space	Sitova välilyönti muotoilumerkki
#### Line break	Rivinvaihto muotoilumerkki
#### Paragraph break	Kappalevaihto muotoilumerkki
#### Page Break	Sivunvaihto muotoilumerkki
#### Section Break	Osanvaihto muotoilumerkki

Line break (`Shift + Enter`) vs paragraph break (`Enter`)

A line break does not start a new paragraph. It can be used, for example, to create a multi-line heading with several lines in the same heading. It can also be used in lists to add line breaks under a single bullet point.

Section Break

A section break can be used to divide a document into different sections. We will review section breaks and their usage in more detail in the Horizontal Page and Document Sections chapter.

Osanvaihto valintanauhalla

Section breaks do not have a keyboard shortcut. You can find this option on the ribbon. Select the **Layout** tab, **Page Setup** group → **Breaks** → **Section Breaks**.

Space (`Space`) vs Non-breaking space (`Ctrl + Shift + Space`)

Non-breaking space adds a space that keeps words or characters together on the same line, preventing them from being separated by a line break (e.g. a phone number will not break even if the line changes).

Symbolit valintanauhalla

You can also insert a non-breaking space from the ribbon: On the **Insert** tab, in the **Symbols** group, on the **Symbol** menu, click the **More Symbols** button.

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The non-breaking space can be found on the Special Characters tab. You can add the character by selecting it and pressing the Insert button.

Page Break (`Ctrl + Enter`)

A page break is necessary when you want to start a new page in a document without affecting the content or formatting of the previous page.

The page break can also be found on the ribbon.

Sivunvaihto valintanauhalla

Click the Page Break button in the Pages group on the Insert tab.

Task: Make the formatting characters visible

Let's start by making the formatting symbols visible. Many of the problems with a document are revealed when we see the formatting symbols. We covered this before, but here we are still learning about formatting symbols again.

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Formatting symbols

Formatting symbols (also known as unprinted characters or hidden characters) are characters that do not appear in normal mode. These include spaces, paragraph breaks and page breaks. Formatting symbols are also shown, for example, when the tab key has been pressed.

Kuva, miltä tulostumattomat merkit näyttävät

When you have these characters visible, you can see which characters have been printed and you can more easily edit the document.

Piilomuotoilupainike on valintanauhan Aloitus-välilehden keskivaiheilla

Piilomuotoilunappi löytyy valintanauhan aloitus-välilehdeltä kappaleryhmästä

To display the formatting characters, click on the the **Show/Hide ¶** button in the **Paragraph** group on the **Home** tab.

You can hide the formatting characters by clicking on the button again.

Problem: Line breaks (↵) and paragraph breaks (¶)

The document uses line breaks (↵) instead of paragraph breaks (¶). A typical situation where this happens is when a text is pasted. If you have not selected Keep Text Only as the pasting method, Wordw ill insert line breaks (↵) instead of paragraph breaks (¶).

There are several line breaks in the body text of the document.

Note also the line break in the Typeface heading. This is particularly problematic because now, from the Word point of view, the text that continues below the heading is part of the heading. You will notice that Word starts to behave strangely if you for example try to set a heading style for the Typeface heading.

Task: Correct the line breaks to paragraph breaks

Remove all line breaks from the document and replace them with paragraph breaks.

We then see that we also need to correct the incorrect formatting created in the text as a result of line breaks.

Model:

Problem: Using two paragraph breaks (¶) to widen the gap between paragraphs

A very common problem in Word documents is the use of two or more paragraph breaks to adjust the paragraph spacing. For many very advanced users of Word, this type of formatting has become a bad habit.

Using paragraph breaks in this way is problematic for several reasons:

The paragraph spacing is usually unnecessarily wide. Adjusting the paragraph width to suit the eye is practically impossible in this way.
You have to keep adding paragraph breaks to the document. Once you start down this road, you find yourself constantly making up for missing paragraph breaks.

Task: Remove extra paragraph breaks (¶) and adjust the paragraph spacing

Delete the extra paragraph breaks (¶) for each place where they occur in a row.

We can then adjust the paragraph breaks to our liking. We can use the Design tab tool for this or set it directly in the Normal style.

Model:

Guide

Additional tip: Replace function facilitates the replacement of special characters

The Replace function allows you to replace characters in the text with other characters. You can apply the replacement to the painted part of the document or to the whole document, if you have not painted an area.

Click on the Replace button in the Editing group on the Home tab. In the window that opens, click on the More button to expand the window.

First click on the Find what box and then select the character to be replaced with the Special button.

Then click on the Replace with box and do the same.

The characters to be replaced are displayed as “codes”. In this example, the manual line break character (^l) is searched for and replaced by the paragraph break character (^p).

If the character just wanted to be deleted, the manual line break character (^l) would have been searched and the box Replace with would have been left empty.

There is also often a need to remove extra Enter presses, when the information searched for could have been two paragraph marks (^p^p) and replaced by one paragraph mark (^p).

If you want to replace all the characters in a document or a painted area, click on the Replace All button. You can also scroll through the text line by line using the Find Next button and replace Replace with the button for individual characters. At the end of the replacement, you will be notified how many replacements were made. The action can be cancelled.

Problem: Manually formatted headings

In the document, heading styles have been used, but the text color has been changed through font formatting. The first heading also contains a bullet point.

When the headings are formatted correctly, the document title and the texts in the corresponding style button will have the same look and feel.

The idea of predefined styles is that they do not need to be formatted in the text, but the desired formatting is done in the style, so that the formatting is updated everywhere in the document where the style is used.

In a situation where the look of the style is not to your liking, it is worth updating the style itself. For instructions on how to do this, see Task: Finish the fonts and colors used in the document on the page Formatting Headings and Document.

Task: Fix heading styles

Correct the layout of headings to be in line with the heading styles.

Problem: The picture is stretched

The proportions of the image are distorted. This has happened when resizing the image.

If you resize the image from the edge point, the image will be distorted. So the image should always be changed from the corner point if you want the aspect ratio of the image to be preserved.

Problem: The image is placed right at the edge of the page

The image is placed too close to the edge of the document. When placing images, it is important to respect the margins of the document. First, the margins create a balanced document.

Secondly, there is also a very practical problem: Standard printers are not able to print right to the edge of the document. If an image (or other content) is placed right at the edge of the document, it will not print completely.

Task: Correct image proportions and layout

Restore the proportions of the image to normal. You can then resize the image to the size you want and move it so that it doesn't exceed the margin.

Problem: The hanging indentation is indented with spaces

These two paragraphs have been indented with a hanging indentation, but after the margin heading, the body text has been moved to the right place with spaces.

Problem: The body text of the hanging indentation is manually formatted

The body text has been formatted with font formatting. To find out this, select the text and check the selection in the **Font** setting in the **Font** group on the **Home** tab.

Task: Fix a hanging indentation

Fixing a hanging indentation by replacing the spaces with the Tab character.

Then we remove the font styling. In the case of hanging indentation, this is a bit trickier, because we want to remove only the font styles. If we remove all formatting, the hanging indentation itself will also be removed.

Model:

`Enter`	Paragraph break (¶)
`Shift+Enter`	Line break (↵)

	To start deleting a line break, place the cursor at the beginning of the line following the line break.
	Remove the line break as usual with the `Backspace` key.
	Add a paragraph break with the `Enter` key.

Download the template file